Part II: Perfect Email Marketing Proposals

Email Marketing

Introduction: How Email Marketing is Done

After covering the fundamental importance of email marketing and lead generation in part I, this post focuses on the elements of the best email campaigns. 

  1. What should the writing copy look like?
  2. What tools for lead generation are best?
  3. Persuasion Techniques for the best lead generation ideas

Remember that your customers get inundated with email gifs and newsletters constantly.  So much so that the standard practice is to skip right by them!  You need a way to “hook” yourself in as a store worth spending time and money on.  It’s the only way to increase your sales.

Consider this post the “how to build a lead generation strategy” email marketing kit 😊

Start with Email Marketing Subject Lines

“It’s that time of the season….”

“Lowest price of the year”

“Flash sale next 48 hours!”

“A Special Deal for You”

These are a few examples of basic lead generation email marketing subject lines – you want the customer right away to feel they’re getting a deal that otherwise won’t be available if they miss out.  In a sense, you are creating a sense of immediacy with the time frame that alerts them to potential savings within your email marketing proposal!  The email marketing subject line is your “banner” automatically seen in the email, so make sure it speaks to the desires of your niche audience.

Consider the Lead Generation Funnel – How Many Times Has your Customer Been Contacted?

While email leads are vital for lucrative lead generation strategies, it doesn’t help if the customer has already dismissed emails from your store.  They may even be leaning towards labeling it spam.  It begs the question: “how often email marketing needs to happen for maximum effectiveness?”  Follow your email marketing metrics for each campaign to measure the answer to these crucial sales questions.

Depending on the data you have from that customer, you should be willing to nimbly adjust your email marketing strategy.  Monitor your store’s email marketing metrics to hone strategies for lead generation.  Less than once a month, and customers will forget about store offerings, and you will lose the momentum of your lead generation emails.  More than a few times a week, and you’ll just piss people off – it becomes spam at that point.  The best email ad campaigns aim to reach out once every 1-2 weeks.  It gives your customers time to digest your offers and reassess their value on a regular basis.  The consistent visibility of new deals to niche customer segments is one of the key ways how email marketing is effective. 

Complement your Lead Generation on Social Media

Consider all the ad banners and promotions your customers have seen.  The best email ad campaigns complement lead generation social media.  Like mentioned in Part I, email writing copies usually are follow-ups based on captured data from an earlier ad campaign.  Picture that your stream of advertisements are basically a “conversation” you are having with your most interested customers.  After reviewing what ads captured emails for lead generation, ask yourself, “What would be the next natural part of the conversation if they said ‘Maybe…’  How would I keep the conversation going to hopefully close the deal?”  Build your promotional persuasion techniques from there

Conclusion: Ad360 can Help Build Custom Email Marketing Templates

So, is lead generation worth it?  Yes!  Email campaigns are highly effective when they build on previous customer outreach efforts.  Knowing which customers to add to which email lists, as well as how to design and produce a unique writing copy for each one, can become head-scratching work for an independent business.  Reach out to try a free demo by Ad360 today for help on building your own custom email marketing templates!

Email Marketing: Powerful Lead Generation

Email Marketing

Introduction: A 3 Part Series on Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing is a key strategy for lead generation in e-commerce.  Without it, you’re basically a dinosaur after the meteor hit: toast.  This post is the first in a three-part series that covers how to formulate lead generation ideas, find helpful tools for lead generation, and apply persuasion techniques to make your email marketing proposals become a core component of your digital marketing strategy!

Why Email Marketing Proposals are Important

Email marketing lead generation complements the web’s most powerful advertising tool: retargeting.  Remember that potential customers need multiple “touches” with your sponsored content.  After running a Facebook marketing campaign or creating ads on Facebook, you need to know how to email for follow up. 

Ad retargeting on Facebook marketing can capture the user’s email, and now, you have a valuable point of access: their virtual inbox!  Email marketing proposals are up to 40 times more effective than social media outreach.  Yep.  For every one lead generation email, you match the value of 40 Facebook marketing ads.  If you operate on an ecommerce platform like Shopify, it is essential you begin building in email marketing database for sales success.

Target Acquired?  Hit ‘Em with Email Marketing Proposals

After capturing customer email data with, say, your Facebook marketing campaign, make sure to include a giant “big red button” that functions as your “CALL TO ACTION!”  If the user already clicked into your email marketing proposal, you need to make it as easy as “one click” to spur their interest.  The design and compelling writing copy text around it are up for debate for A/B testing, but sometimes it helps to literally make it a BIG RED BUTTON that say “CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW!”  It can be that simple of a strategy for lead generation, leading to a conversion rate over 40 times regular social media posts.

What About Email Marketing Subject Lines?  Design?  Persuasion Techniques?

The topics of proper email marketing proposal design and writing copy persuasion techniques are a bit dense, but there are ways to break down the process into digestible bits!

Parts 2 and 3 will cover “how to build an effective lead generation email,” along with “what lead generation strategies best convert sales for your Shopify store.”  After reading all these parts in this series, you will feel much more confident and capable of creating a compelling email marketing template.

Conclusion: No Need to Hire Email Marketing Agencies

Most automated lead generation email marketing services are remarkably impersonal and provide all the software with none of the professional expertise.  Ad360 can help generate automated marketing emails to jumpstart your sales persuasion techniques and writing copy – but we are also here for 24/7 human support!  You can get feedback from digital marketing experts about how your email marketing proposal is shaping up 😊  Try our free demo to test the waters at Ad360 today! 

What is Marketing’s “Rule of 7”?

Rule of 7

Introduction: The More Frequent the Ads, the More Frequent the Sales

We’ve mentioned in previous posts that customers online need to see your ads multiple times before there are convinced your products are the solution to their problems.  We’ve referenced the number “7” in previous articles for the number of times a customer notices your ads before seriously considering buying and boosting your sales.

Where does the “rule of 7” come from in marketing??  Is it true?  How does it apply to ecommerce?

This post explores the significance of the “Rules of 7” and how it can be applied to drive traffic to your store, increase your sales, and offer a clearer framework for your marketing strategy!

“Rule of 7” – Half-Myth, Half-Truth

For history buffs, it’s interesting to note that the “rule of 7” came from 1930s Hollywood movie execs.  Their marketing research showed moviegoers, on average, needed to see a movie poster 7 times before buying tickets. 

So, while the “rule of 7” holds weight in that regard, online shopping and ecommerce are a far different animal from 1930s America!  Customer tastes have changed, the medium of advertising has changed, and so effective promotional methods have evolved, as well.

At the same time, the concept that customers usually need multiple exposures to your ads before purchasing is undeniably true.  The more times potential customers see your ads, the more likely they are to buy from your store, on average.  This could mean seeing a mobile ad, Facebook ad, and your inclusion on the Google search engine – or some other combination of media exposure.  Regardless, it’s best to picture that your ads become part of the “mental steps” a customer takes when picking what to purchase.

Overall, the “rule of 3s” may apply better to the Internet age.  After three or more exposures to your advertisements, customers become acutely aware of your brand, and the majority begin considering your products a viable solution to their problems.  Increased sales will follow!

Standing Out in a Flood of Information

The difficulty of the ecommerce ecosystem is how customers are flooded with ads and information constantly.  this flood of information means your name and brand needs to pop up multiple times, ideally in varying formats, before the customer begins to consider your products as a viable solution to their problem. 

To maximize the results of your marketing campaign, you cannot just put the same ads in the same place over and over.  Depending on customer, you need to communicate in different mediums with different approaches.  For example, maybe you start with a Facebook informational ad campaign, collecting some user emails through retargeting software.  You use the data collected from the first ad campaign to specifically retarget the customer with a different ad that more directly responds to their interests.  Finally, you send the customer an email with a special “first time user” deal.  After that, you hopefully have pushed the customer along the sales funnel to the point they regularly visit your site for good deals.  Over time, you become a regular step in their “mental process” for buying new products.

The “Rule of 7” Re-Enforces the Importance of Ad Retargeting

We have spoken a lot about ad retargeting here at Ad360 – and for good reason. It is mind-boggling the number of good companies, selling great products, that shoot themselves in the foot by not taking advantage of retargeting.  After one view, chances are the customer totally forgets the name of your business… but the captured data doesn’t forget!  From there, you can continue to fine-tune your message, catering to the user at each step of their mental process until they feel comfortable making a purchase from your site.

Conclusion: Tailoring your Ads to Respect the “Rule of 7”

Switching up your ad banners and promotional outreach at every step of the customer’s mental process can be difficult by yourself.  One false move, and they may jump off the wagon, ignoring your future customer outreach efforts.

If you feel you could use some support staying on track with your customers until they finally purchase from your store, try a free demo by Ad360 today!  We provide best-in-class ad retargeting services, empowering your business to boost sales through media exposure across all devices,  social media, and  search engine.  Your customers will be impressed with the variety of outreach, and you can control every campaign under one roof – Ad360. 😊

Choice Overload is hurting Conversions

Choice Overload is Hurting your Conversion Rate

Welcome to Ecommerce Success by Ad360, the channel where we share tips, news, best practices to help business owners be happy, productive, and successful!

A Landing Page is where users land after clicking on an ad. Usually, Landing Pages are laser-focused towards your main goal in that context. If your website sells different categories of products, appealing to various audience segments, you should probably have multiple Landing Pages, with each targeting a specific audience segment and/or product.

The reason why the Homepage doesn’t make for a good landing page is that it usually contains varied content. Perhaps counter-intuitively, having more options isn’t necessarily a way to increase the probability of your website visitors to take an action. 

Quite the contrary actually says the Choice Overload paradox: having too many options to choose from deters some users from making a choice at all. 

For this reason, a Homepage containing a lot of different products may have a lower conversion rate than a dedicated landing page, meaning that in most cases, you don’t want to bring users who click on your ads towards your Homepage. 

Wishing you a lot of success!

Choice Overload means that users are less likely to perform your desired target on the Homepage, making it less efficient than a dedicated Landing Page.

5 Stages of Customer Awareness

5 levels of Eugene Schwartz

Introduction: Leading your Customer from “Total Ignorance” to “Problem Solved”

Picture that, at its best, advertising seamlessly enters the conversation of their customers.  It’s not disjointed, it’s not ill-timed, and it provides a solution to a problem they’ve maybe considered… or might be totally unaware of.

Here enters the difficulty of effective marketing: each customer you reach out to may be at a different level of “customer awareness.”  Does the customer already know you exist, and they are in the process of comparing you to competitors?  Or are they so behind the 8-ball that they don’t even know they have a problem? 

Inspired by marketing guru Eugene Schwartz, this blog post explores how properly framing the “five levels of customer awareness” brings precision and personalization to your customer outreach.  It is essential to make sure you don’t come across as “spammy” or “pushy” while marketing your services online.

Different Segments of the Audience Require Different Messaging

We’ve made clear in previous posts that custom audiences are essential for honing your online ad campaigns.  However, we haven’t yet discussed that the level of “product awareness” everyone has may vary wildly.  You don’t want to send the same ad to a customer regular as you do to someone who has never even considered your solution to the problem.  It will either come across as pushy, repetitive,  or go directly over their heads.  Below are the five stages of customer awareness listed out:

1. Unaware:

  • The customer is completely unaware or unable to frame their problem.  You can help by providing educational, entertaining, and engaging content to make them aware of the issue!

2. Problem Aware

  • The customer now knows there’s a problem, but are stuck or too busy to consider solutions.  Emphasize the priority of the issue and how they could minimize their stress by considering a solution!

3. Solution Aware

  • Here is the transition point.  You tell the customer that your store has the proper solution to the problem you framed earlier.

4. Product Aware

  • Now, the customer is fully engaged with solving their issue… but they haven’t decided between you and other competitors.  You need to expand on your product’s benefits, and why buying from your store will exceed their expectations.

5. Most Aware

  • These are customer regulars who appreciate genuine outreach and “special offers,” like VIP coupons and the sort.  Because they have a proven track record of buying from your store, feel free to sweeten the deal for them!

Real-Life Example of Ad Messaging Through the “5 Stages of Customer Awareness”

Let’s stay you’re a hair styling company selling unique, all natural hair products.  The customer, using the same cheap hair products for years now, is totally unaware of the damage being done to their hair.  So, you start your targeted ad campaign with the following intent:

A. Make customers aware of the problem with the chemicals in certain hair products – such as sulfates, parabens, or formaldehyde.  The Ad banner could read, “Chemicals in common shampoos could be doing damaging your hair and health!”
B. Offer a solution.  It could read, “How to pick the perfect hair products for your type of hair”
C. Now it’s time to push your e-commerce site!  The ad banner reads, “Check out our website for the most healthy, nourishing products for each hair type!”
D. At this point, the customer’s cursor is hovering over “click to buy” – You may want to offer these folks a deal-sweetener to close the deal.  This could include free shipping on their first purchase or maybe 10% off.

Conclusion: Organizing your Custom Audience Based on the 5 Levels of Awareness

For some business owners, organizing custom audiences based on their awareness is a bridge too far.  It seems overly complicated, bogged down in details, and out of reach.  Designing specific ad banners catering to each level of awareness is quite the undertaking – but it is the key to boosting sales to your e-commerce store.  To have to marketing message resonate with buyers, you need to show a dynamic evolution in your customer outreach.

So, try a free demo from Ad360!  We can help analyze your target audience based on their awareness, generating custom ads tailored to each stage of the process.  We’ll provide support on how to organize and run the promotions step-by-step, funneling your audience from totally unaware to loyal customers 😊

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